I found Niall Ferguson’s op-ed in Global Times interesting if not particularly informative. In it he questions the “liberal international order”:
The phrase international order reminds me of the phrase Western civilization. As Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi wittily replied when asked about Western civilization, “It would be a good idea.” The notion that international order exists or has ever existed seems highly questionable to me. The notion of a liberal international order is even more questionable because it is neither liberal, nor international, nor very orderly.
It is often claimed by political scientists that the liberal international order came into existence in 1945. The argument goes that American and British statesmen, having learned from the terrible mistakes of the 1930s and 1940s, decided to make the world anew by creating a series of remarkable international institutions: the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and later the World Bank. According to this narrative, Donald Trump’s election as US president in 2016 was a wrecking ball directed at the liberal international order created by the generation of 1945.
Yet this is a fairy tale. For one thing, there was nothing very liberal about the economic order that was established in 1945. It was devised by people – notably John Maynard Keynes – who had repudiated classical liberal economics and believed that international trade should be limited and capital movements controlled.
What has actually existed is different countries with different interests pursuing those interests with the differing tools they have at their disposal. Brussels is delusional and those who believe otherwise are primarily playing into the hands of those in whose interests it was primarily conceived, i.e. Germany.
The circumstances are different today than they were 70 years ago when the “international order” was put into place. Some countries, e.g. China, have much more powerful tools at their disposal than they did when that order came into being. Others, e.g. the Arab countries of the Middle East, were practically invisible 70 years ago—they were so small and poor. I read Dr. Ferguson as urging the great powers—presently including the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France and, possibly, India but in the future who know?—to eschew great power war and cooperate when it’s in their interests.
IMO that’s the right advice but it would help if politicians in China and the U. S. in particular didn’t think that great power was inevitable and persist in trying to foment it.
I suspect getting into this with Ferguson would be to launch into a series of “No True Scotsman” observations.
The liberal international order probably began in the 19th century when first Great Britain, and eventually other countries acted to end the Atlantic slave trade, and then abolish slavery. This was done initially through bilateral treaties, ajudicated by commissions set up to resolve disputes, but eventually worked its way in to the terms of international congresses amongst the great powers.
The objection might be that much of this is imperialistic, gathering its international flavor by virtue of the fact that European countries either occupied foreign lands and/or controlled capitol flows so that they could impose their will and deny the self-determination of indigineous peoples.
So? I’m not sure one could describe a liberal international order as anything that was not in opposition to the previous status quo.
That’s a great example and it may even support his point. Slavery was only abolished all over the world if you narrow your definition of “the world” sufficiently. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there weren’t more slaves in the world now than there were in 1860. The world got larger.